Annie Cresta in Her Hunger Games |Fanfiction

Chapter 3: The Search for Talon

After we're done with breakfast, we grab our stuff and go. We carefully creep behind trees and duck behind bushes. There's no sign of Talon, and we're both thirsty, so we head to the freshwater stream I found earlier in the Games.

We fill up our canister and each take long drinks. A cannon booms, startling me, and I jump.

"Please don't be Talon, please don't be Talon!" I whisper, and we continue to walk. As we walk, Mia shoots a squirrel out of a tree, knocking it to the ground, motionless. Mia picks it up and puts it in my pack.

"We'll skin it later," she says, seeing my confused look.

"I know that," I say, waving the idea away, "but I didn't know you could shoot like that!"

I see her start to blush a little and she says, "Oh, yeah, some people say I'm pretty good at hunting animals. But not people," she says, and normal color returns to her cheeks.

We walk until the sun goes down, and Talon still doesn't make an appearance. Two cannons blew today, signaling that there's only 6 tributes left.

We built a fire earlier and ate some squirrel, but now we settle behind a bush to watch the faces in the sky. It's the boy from 1, and the girl from 12. So now it's us, Talon, the girl from 6, and 2 Careers.

I look over at Mia, but she doesn't seem fazed by the death of her district partner. She just lays down and silently goes to sleep.

I wake her up at what seems like 2:00, and I lay down, and I drift off to sleep eventually.

I have a dream about Talon, maybe it was him dying in a fire? Or him being killed by the remaining Careers? I don't know. But it was definitely not one of the better dreams I've had.

I wake up just after the sun rises, and Mia has gotten a little fire started, and she's cooking some squirrel over it.

"Morning'," she says, smiling at me.

"Good morning," I say, returning the smile. She gives me some squirrel, and it's tastes delicious.

"Yum," I say, finishing the meat and throwing my stick into the woods.

"Attention tributes!" says a voice, exciting and scaring me.

"In honor of making it to the final 6, there will be a feast at the cornucopia tomorrow morning. All of you have an opportunity to get what you need. There will be a sack with your district on it. Hope to see you tomorrow, and may the odds be ever in your favor!" he says, and me and Mia exchange glances. What we really need is more food, we're out of squirrel now.

We put out the fire and start walking. We pass the river, and I notice there's a beaver dam a little farther down the stream. I step on it, and it can hold my weight.

"Just in case," I say to Mia, who's giving me strange looks.

We continue our trek into the woods, but yet again, Talon doesn't make an appearance.

Around what I judge to be 4:30, a cannon sounds. We keep walking, faster now. Talon can fight, so I'm not too worried about him. But we still don't find him.

We climb onto a thick tree, and sit on the branch that's about 3 feet wide. The faces show up in the sky, and to my surprise, it's the girl from 2.

"Only one Career left," says Mia.

She lets me sleep first tonight, so I lay down. I don't have a dream that night, and the next thing I know, Mia's waking me up to take a shift.

I just sit there, contemplating strategies for the feast.